I've compiled an updated list from new definitions that people have posted, as well as some of my own.

TOOLS REDEFINED

1. DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted part you were drying.

2. WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, "SH**!!!"

3. ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age

4. PLIERS: Used to round off hexagonal bolt heads.

5. HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle: It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

6. VISE GRIP PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

7. OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for setting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside a wheel hub you're trying to get the bearing race out of.

8. WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16 or 1/2 socket you've been searching for the last 15 minutes.

9. HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new disk brake pads, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

10. EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 4X4: Used to attempt to lever an automobile upward off a hydraulic jack handle.

14. E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.

15. TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of bolts and fuel lines you forgot to disconnect.

16. CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.

17 AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

18. INSPECTION LIGHT: The home builder's own tanning booth. Sometimes called drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

19. PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and squirt oil on your shirt; can also be used, as the name implies, to round off the interiors of Phillips screw heads.

20. AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to an Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last tightened 70 years ago by someone at Ford, and rounds them off.

21. PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50p part.

22. HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to cut hoses 1/2 inch too short.

23. HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer now-a-days is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

24. MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing upholstered items, chrome-plated metal, plastic parts and the other hand not holding the knife.

25. EPOXY: A binary adhesive used to preserve failed components in a corrosion resistant sarcophagus that can be admired by future generations, not dissimilar to prehistoric insects trapped in amber.

26. PVC PRIMER: While theoretically used to in the bonding of PVC pipes, its main use is as a pigment for irreversibly colouring everything in its vicinity a bright purple hue.

27. DREMEL: Used for breaking rotary tool bits. Also shows an aversion to physical contact, and will actively try to escape the hands of anyone attempting to use it.

28. PIPE CUTTER: Used to cut pretty spiral patterns on the side of a pipe you wanted to cut in half

29. ELECTRICAL TAPE: Wound dressing

30. SUPERGLUE: Used mainly as wound glue. Also handy for bonding eyelids shut and permanently fixing hands to a workpiece.

31. MEASURING TAPE: Long, dull blade designed for cutting flesh, often with faint traces of lines along the sides spaced at semi-regular intervals.

32. PIPE WRENCH: Designed to help your fist remove your glasses or front teeth when it slips from a 2" fitting. The handle is hardened to cope with repetitive impacts to face. Sometimes sees use as a tool to tighten a loose threaded fitting to the point that it cracks just enough to not be visible, but to fail spectacularly when put under pressure.

33. ADJUSTABLE WRENCH: wrench designed to slowly loosen during use, so on that very last turn of the fitting/bolt/etc., the jaw slips and the handle flies forward with respectable velocity. See HAMMER.

34. HEX KEY: Useful for binding two fingers together because it went through them when you were trying to remove the chuck from a pneumatic drill, while it was still connected to its air supply.

35. HOMEMADE HIGH PRESSURE HAND PUMP: Specialised pneumatic tool of Dutch origin used to remove front teeth much faster than a pipe wrench. It achieves this by impacting them with a large, tee shaped copper bar which is propelled upwards at several hundred feet per second when the check valve fails at roughly 1150 psi.

36. UTILITY KNIFE BLADE: Easily replaceable sharp object designed to hide in boxes and make you hate the fact that you even have pain receptors.

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Spudfiles' resident expert on all things that sail through the air at improbable speeds, trailing an incandescent wake of ionized air, dissociated polymers and metal oxides.